"Iran is moving step-by-step towards a point where it will be able to decide if it wants to make a nuclear bomb. It has not decided yet whether to go the extra mile……..In my opinion, (Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) will be making a huge mistake if he does that and I don't think he will want to go the extra mile.......I think the Iranian leadership is comprised of very rational people".

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad displayed some of this rational thought whenhe said in September 2012"Let's even imagine that we have an atomic weapon, a nuclear weapon. What would we do with it? What intelligent person would fight 5,000 American bombs with one bomb?"

“Nuclear weapons are not at all beneficial to us, from an ideological and juridical perspective, we consider developing nuclear weapons unlawful. We consider using such weapons as a big sin. We also believe that keeping such weapons is futile and dangerous, and we will never go after them.”

Writing in the Guardian Glenn Greenwald believes that the real reason the US does not want Iran to have nuclear weapons is that"Iranian nuclear weapons would prevent the US from attacking Iran at will, and that is what is intolerable………The Iranians undoubtedly watched the US treatment of two dictators who gave up their quest for nuclear weapons – Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi – and drew the only reasoned lesson: the only way a country can protect itself from US attack, other than full-scale obeisance, is to acquire nuclear weapons. That is precisely why the US and Israel are so eager to ensure they do not….No rational person takes seriously the claim that Iran, even if it did obtain a nuclear weapon, would commit instant and guaranteed national suicide by using it to attack a nation that has a huge nuclear stockpile, which happens to include both the US and Israel."

Unlike Iran there is no doubt that North Koreas ambition is a nuclear armed state, on the 12th February North Korea announced that it had carried out an underground nuclear test, its third in seven years. Dr Leonid Petrov of the Australian National University has said "We have passed already the point of no return: North Korea is de facto a nuclear state" the only thing Pyongyang doesn't appear to have is the ability to build a nuclear warhead small enough to mount on a long-range missile. However they may be working on this; the day before its recent test The Korea Herald reports that the north tested the engine for its long range "KN-08" missiles, the report quotes an unnamed government source as saying

“It appears that North Korea conducted the engine test aimed at extending the range of the KN-08 missile to over 5,000 kilometres……if the North decides the test successful, it is expected to operationally deploy the new long-range rocket”.

Despite North Korea being much closer to developing nuclear weapons then Iran there is talk of strengthening sanctions against Pyongyang but little talk ofbombing the Norths nuclear facilities, the chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff General Jung Seung-jo did say that South Korea would launch a pre-emptive strike against the North but only if "there's a clear sign of the enemy using a nuclear weapon". After its most recent nuclear test The Korea Times merely reports that "hawkish forces [in South Korea are] calling for tougher sanctions."

"cut nearly all trade with North Korea, deny North Korean merchant ships use of South Korean sea lanes and ask the United Nations Security Council to punish the North"

(would Israel have been so restrained if Iran had attacked and destroyed an Israeli submarine killing 46 sailors? I don't think so). The New York Times adds that "most South Koreans condemned the North for the sinking and supported Mr. Lee’s handling of the crisis" but adds that "many also blamed his tough stance toward the North for fuelling a military provocation."